Saturday, 20 September 2014

Improving community resilience through nature
based solutions in Kenya

Boka –
situated in the North Eastern region of Keya - in our grandmothers time
provided the only water resource for all pastoralist communities in a vast
dryland area of over 200 km2. The Boka wells and rainy seasons offered enough
water for people and cattle and there were no conflicts of any significance.
Problems that did surface were dealt with by the council of elders.

After
independence a disconnect developed between the new legal systems governing water, land management, other
jurisdictions and the old traditional system of the council of elders dealing
with these issues. Population was growing, so were the numbers of livestock.
Climate change caused an increasing numbers of droughts which caused water scarcity
and conflicts over access to water.

These conflicts
often came to a climax of serious fights over who can feed his animals first and
there is no family that has no history of family members being killed or
severly wounded in such fights. These desperate situations led to attention of
donors and investments of them in water management and related themes in the
area. IUCN put in place a series of interventions that repaired the disconnect
between the old and new water governance systems by helping local authorities
and communities formulate Bylaws that regulate access and use of water. IUCN
also put Infrastructure in place to channel water from the river in the rainy
season into the wells and keep them better fed than before. This all being
accompanied by a series of capacity development and awareness raising activities.

Now the
settled and pastoral communities in Boka can use the water resources for both
human consumption and for livestock in a an organized way and satisfying all
basic needs again. Any conflict is solved through dialogue and other measures
foreseen in the Bylaws. The water conflicts out of the way means a huge
positive change for the communities as far as health is concerned, family
income, education for children and peace in the communities. More investment in
water management infrastructure and local capacity development will offer even
more opportunities for communities to cope with the effects of climate change
and increased droughts.

Improving community resilience through nature
based solutions in Uganda

Arwotngo –
situated in the Northern region of Uganda - in our grandmothers time was a
peaceful Parish, where people lived a simple but good life. They had ample
livestock and the fertile soil provided many opportunities for agriculture.
People were used to drinking milk and eating meat and vegetables. There was no
indiscriminate cutting of trees and when you needed one you went to your
grandfather to ask for permission. There were no conflicts of any significance.
Problems that did surface were dealt with by the council of elders.

In the
nineteen seventies things began to change. Tribes with weapons started to rob
us from our livestock. Women were raped. Children were abducted and never
returned. Then all out war started. There was little food. When the LRA entered
the stage things became even worse. In 2002 all people fled from the rural
areas to Lira, where we lived in refugee camps depended on International Relief
Aid. Outside the camps it was not safe. Inside we barely survived. In 2005
things began to improve and the first community members went back to their
homes. In 2008 the majority was back.

Life in the
camp was bad, but returning home was maybe worse. We had no international
support anymore, we had no housing, no food no nothing. So people started to
cut trees to cultivate crops and sell charcoal to the trucks that came from
Lira to collect the fuel. Wetland were turned into rice paddies. There was a
lot of domestic violence, we were constantly struggling for money. Water points
were shared between people and livestock, there was no sanitation causing a
range of health issues. Wetlands were drained and during droughts we had almost
no water and in the rainy season the rivers flooded our crops. Then IUCN came.
First we thought they were going to grab our land, as we were growing rice in
the wetlands. Later we realized they meant well with us as they gave us small
sums of money we could use to buy seedlings.

We
established a relationship of trust and they taught us saving, agro-forestry,
the use of fruit trees, e.g. the shea nut tree. They started conservation fund
from which we could borrow money to improve our income, on the condition that
we participated in their water management activities by demarcating riverbanks,
fencing water points, organizing ourselves to formulate by-laws etc. Very soon
we saw the positive results: more and better quality water, more income for
households, more peace at home, no more tree cutting, less floods. Now we have
a much more positive vision for the future and we feel we can cope better with
extreme droughts and floods.

Comparing the change strategies

In Kenya
the land and water management changes did not really affect business as usual
in the community. The men continued to be pastoralists, their women looked
after their families, they started jointly a garden to diversify their
livelihoods. The behavior change of community members was driven by the harsh experience
of two years of extreme drought: no water for people and cattle. The pain of
changing was far less than the pain of not changing. Improving and co-managing
the water resources, especially by integrating the traditional governance
systems was not a painful change. The only big change was the increased role of
women in managing the resources and the new phenomenon of girls going to school (a consequence of the new position of their mothers). A pain that men at last could deal
with.

In Uganda a
similar strategy to technically improve land and water management, diversify
livelihoods, strengthen self governance and learning did not work
automatically. People were not interested to participate in the IUCN project.
In the end they asked for a community revolving fund for small loans as a
condition to participate in the project. Here the pain of changing without the
fund would have been far bigger than the pain of not changing. Giving up their
charcoal burning and rice paddies without an alternative would mean no income.
In the camps they had learned to trade and set up small businesses, in the fund
they saw the opportunity to use these skills and have a source of income for
the short term. Fortunately IUCN was flexible enough to adapt their strategy. Then the change in the community started to develop along similar lines as in Kenya.

In both countries women were driven by values as self-direction (they saw the opportunity to become more independent) and security (they realized the importance of diversification of livelihoods). The men were driven by tradition (the by laws gave a new impetus to the traditional governance intstitutions such as the Council of Elders). These values proved stronger for both men and women than the values underpinning their behavior before the project came. For men driving values had been power (men are the owners of the cattle and that was more important for them than anything else) and hedonism (easy life). The behavior of the women was mostly driven by conformity (obedience). To upscale the project it is important to take into account the driving values of current and desired behavior.

Sunday, 3 August 2014

This is what I learned from Stanley Asah in our workshops on conservation psychology. Human values are transsituational goals of varied
importance, that serve as guiding principles in people’s personal life and in
the life of their society.Values are goals or deep rooted beliefs. They pertain
to a desirable end state or mode of conduct. Values transcend specific
situations. Depending on the person some values are more important than other
values. People have individual systems or patterns of value priorities.

Values are acquired through socialization with dominant
group values and personal experiences. Values are relatively very stable, much
more than attitudes, cultural influences, worldviews, perceptions or influences from the social
environment. Individual value priority systems determine one’s identity and
behavior. Values interact sometimes in conflicting ways.

Ultimately values drive people’s behavior, serve their interests, are
standards for judging others, and enable people to cope with reality through
transforming existential necessities into expressible specific values to
facilitate communicative action. Values are responses to our needs as
biological organisms, for coordinated social interaction, for the smooth functioning
and survial of social entities.

Universal human values are salient motivations towards the following different end goals:

1.Power – social status and prestige, control or
dominance over people or resources (the end goals is authority and or wealth)

2.Achievement – personal success through
demonstrating competence according to social standards (the end goal is to be successful,
capable)

3.Hedonism – pleasure and sensuous gratification
for oneself (the end goal is to have pleasure, enjoying life)

4.Stimulation – Excitement, novelty and challenge
in life (the end goals is to have a daring, varied life)

Saturday, 21 June 2014

MomentUs,
launched in January 2013, is a new strategic organizing and communications
initiative designed to build a game-changing increase in personal and
institutional support for climate change solutions by using local and regional
impacts and preparedness to engage the breadth of the American public in
mitigation.They just published BEYONDSTORMS & DROUGHTS: The Psychological Impacts of Climate Change.

A summary is published here. For this blog I selected
some key excerpts from the main text:

Understanding Climate Change

One reason
why people may not accept or act on climate change is that the problem is often
perceived as global, distant, and difficult to understand.

Learning
about the local effects of climate change can make climate change more tangible
and thus make people more likely to accept it as a reality.

Experiencing the effects of
climate change sometimes makes people more likely to accept climate change,
although psychological factors and people’s worldviews and ideologies can
complicate this link.

Helping people understand the
psychological impacts of climate change could be one way to increase people's
willingness to respond to the issue.

Different Types of Climate Impacts: Disasters vs. Gradual Effects

Disasters onset at a specific point in time and are often highly
visible. Examples of disasters include floods, hurricanes, wildfires, heat
waves, and droughts.

Gradual effects build up over time and are harder
to observe. Gradual effects include: slow changes in mean temperature, humidity
and dew point; sea level rise; spread of disease; changes in agricultural
conditions and associated increases in food insecurity; changes in natural
landscapes, changes in land use and habitation and associated increases in
numbers of displaced people; ecosystem disruptions; increased air pollution;
and decreased availability of fresh water.

Impacts on Mental health

Some of climate change’s impacts on mental health
will come about from the direct and immediate physical impacts of climate
change. Others will come about as a result of climate change’s more gradual
impacts on the environment, human systems and infrastructure.

Drought is a special case of natural disaster
that can have par­ticular effects due to the drought’s potential to impact
people’s livelihoods, especially farmers’.

Women, children, and older adults may be
especially susceptible to some mental health impacts.

Experiencing adversity from climate impacts is
not inevitable. In some cases, adversity can result in personal and psychological
growth, a phenomenon known as post-traumatic growth.

Tips to prepare and
strengthen communities

Planners, policymakers, and other leaders may have experience
preparing for the physical impacts of climate change. However, they may be less
well-equipped to plan for psychological impacts. Here are 9 tips that planners,
policymakers, and other organizations can use as they prepare for and respond
to the impacts of climate change:

Sunday, 8 June 2014

Template for group work in a workshop next week for directors of national parks on corporate communication. First decide in your group what the three most important audiences are for your national park. Then brainstorm about the key elements of the idfentity of your park and fill the boxes with key words.

Thursday, 5 June 2014

I have always had some difficulties – for many reasons – with the concept of leadership. One reason e.g. being that after all this years of sustainability leadership investments, I ask myself: in which positions did these students finally land, where can we see the impact? And people Ghandi never were trained as leader nor did he like to be a leader, however hundreds of thousands wanted to follow him. So I was very pleased when a few weeks ago I saw this on the net about thought leadership. For me we should - like Lao Tse - not talk about leadership but about wisdom.

Thursday, 1 May 2014

Asked to comment on a project proposal for an anti-rhino poaching campaign,
I noticed that it was very much an activity driven
project proposal. My reaction was: "next time
before starting to fill in the donor's template make a short concept note that
you circulate to others to get input. Now it is difficult to give strategic
advice as there is no real strategy. The project proposal immediately focuses
on activities that seem to be fun and not on desired results in specific
audiences. For me the main reasoning of such a concept note in should be
something like this:

All signs
indicate that Rhino poaching in Namibia will be an increasing issue in the very
near future. The entry of international organized crime into Namibia will not
only threaten species and decrease Namibia’s natural heritage and capital, but
it also will introduce other forms of crime and corruption, damage Namibia’s
reputation as a tourist destination, negatively affect the life of people in
local communities to name only a few consequences. Legislation, law enforcement
and economic measures alone will be insufficient to adequately tackle the
issue. In reality what mostly happens is
that politicians call for committees or expert meetings; national enforcement
officers put an other priority on their list; local enforcement officers are
confronted with again another priority and continue business as usual;
other ministries look away as do small and medium enterprises who may suspect
their clients are involved in illegal wildlife trade. In short these
instruments may not work without a serious investment in awareness raising,
attitude and behaviour change of a number of actors.

This
project offers an opportunity to help realize a future without Rhino poaching
in Namibia. A future of Namibia as an African country where rhinos and other
wildlife flourish. A future where parliamentarians are keen to set the right
priorities for appropriate legislation and governance. A future where law
enforcement institutions and officers are aware of the challenges, are immune
for bribes and motivated to take these challenges head on. A future where
the relevant ministries mobilize funds to provide financial incentives to local
communities to monitor wildlife and immediately report crime or criminal
intruders. A future where there is a broad support in Namibian society for all
efforts to prevent, reduce and eradicate poaching, where travel agents, hotel
owners, car rentals, restaurants and shop owners do not facilitate in any
way the stay and operations of people involved Rhino poaching. Where media give
positive feedback on rhino conservation successes, where they provide education
and are a channel for messages from local people and bottom-up initiatives.
Where media make rhino conservation the talk of the town and stimulate word of
mouth. A future where rhino is a broadly shared national emotion!

The vision
of this project is that to reach such a future, one needs to raise awareness
about the uniqueness of the rhino, its
innocence, its beauty, its place in folk tales. People also need to know of the
heroic activities of normal community members and organizations who in the past
and today already are conserving the rhino, the opportunities for many in
Namibia to better capitalize on the current rhino population, the negative
impacts that wildlife crime will have on society if no action is taken, the
concrete possibilities people have to contribute to rhino conservation. The way
to raise this awareness is not by telling people what is good, but by appealing
to their traditional value systems and link these values with the Rhino issue:
how the rhinos in our community make us happy; how it is a longstanding
tradition and normal in our society not to kill rhinos; how we view in our
culture rhinos and other wildlife as integral part of our natural environment
almost like family; how we protect the innocent rhinos against poachers
who want to earn a quick buck; how we see rhino conservation as part of our
social justice in Namibia, how we see it as immoral to in anyway assist
poachers and illegal traders.

The
strategic initiatives this project offers – when designed and executed fast
enough and well enough will make the vision described above a reality. The
initiatives comprise activities of compiling and distributing local stories,
individual stories, children’s drawings, songs, poems, music events, campfire
events, competitions and other cultural activities that illustrate how
traditional and cultural values link with rhino conservation. Some activities
are focused on the general public and distributed through mass media. They
provide the general messages and create the feel, emotion and motivation for a
Namibian future with Rhinos and without poachers. Other activities are tailored
strategically to specific audiences, e.g. schools, universities,
parliamentarians, law enforcement, tourism SMEs etc. They appeal to specific emotions and values of each
target audience and convey concrete messages of how they can contribute to a
future of Namibia with rhinos and without poachers. The activities
are initiated by a coalition of government institutions and NGOs and
coordinated by Natuye, with strategic advice of IUCN CEC. The costs of such a
project far exceed the current budget of the proposal. If that is a problem you
make this a pilot project that shows how it can work and explores ways to roll
it out over the whole nation.

Tuesday, 22 April 2014

It is a Dutch tradition to perform the St. Matthew Passion in
the week before Eastern. In churches and concert halls. By professionals and by amateurs.
This year I watched 5 different performances on the BRAVA TV Channel. Every
night one. From beginning to the end. I listened to hear the differences. All performances made a deep impression on me in different ways. The contagious enthusiasm
of the Vocal Markant Ensemble. The
passion of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra to get deep into the intentions and feelings
of the composer. The celestial boys’ voices of the Thomanerchor with the Gewandhaus orchestre in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. The “classical” version
in which Mendelsohn rearranged the composition to reintroduce it to ears,
hearts and minds of the 19th century inhabitants of Leipzig, by the Dutch Symphony
Orchestra. And finally the special and familiar sound of the Concertgebouw Orchestra,
realized over the last 100 years of performing this piece every Eastern season.

One thing I noticed was that all performances seemed to me
to be faster than when I first heard the Passion in the nineteen fifties. One more than
the other. Ton Koopman was especially fast. It was fascinating to hear the violin
solo of the Aria ‘Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder’. In the interpretation of the
Concertgebouw and the Gewandhaus orchestra the tempo was slower and the violin
played more in the traditional way the Chaconne for violin solo is mostly played. Such tempo
and style bring old memories back. I hear my father practicing and performing.However in the Koopman interpretation you
really could hear and see the silver coins rolling down the temple steps. Mendelsohn
had left out this aria altogether, as well as most of the Chorals. He must have
thought that these reflections on specific events in the story were unwelcome
interruptions of the dramatic flow of music and text for the ‘romantic’ audience
of his time.

The performances also showed how the environment influences
the performance: in the church it gets a real protestant (Lutherian) meaning,
while in the concert hall it becomes more a secular reflection on the forces of
good and evil in our lives. Other interesting details are the way the basso
continuo was performed, sometimes without organ, sometimes with one organ, some
times with an organ in each Coro. Performing with only male voices (or almost
only) or with a mixed chorus had
different effects. Then the line up of the two orchestras. In the church they
were most probably closest to the possibilities Bach had himself. On the
concert hall podium, the orchestras were much larger and the Coros had much
more players. What stayed the same was the powerful music: deeply moving by touching
on a range of emotions. I remember how long it felt the first time I sat in the
church listening to the Mattheus. How incredible it was to play the violin in
Coro I and be in the middle of the sound with our student orchestra. And how I
slowly over the years learned to apprecfiate the different parts of this
phenomenal composition, always discovering something new. I look forward to next
year.

Monday, 24 February 2014

An organization has developed a new initiative
for conservation. They want to bring this initiative a step further by organizing
a side event with their partners during a conference. The communication officer
is asked to develop a plan for the side event:

In short her objectives (and means) are:

Present the current conceptual
framework our initiative in the light of current discussions of the conference
(through a presentation by one of the initiators)

Present the logframes developed as a way forward for our
initiative (by a panel discussion with experts).

Invite suggestions on the challenges
of applying this contextual framework at national and global level (through buzz
groups).

Asked for suggestions on this plan she got as feedback
this not going to work. You are jumping to means, you focus on the wrong
audience and you have objectives that are not helpful to make the event a
success.

HOW TO DO IT RIGHT?

Before developing the plan, she should have asked her boss:Is this really possible? (no, the
effective time one has for a side event
is only one hour)Would this audience be available to attend our side event? (no, they would have their own events).What is it that you really want and what we realistically can
achieve? (e.g. support from conference participants for
our initiative).

On the basis of such last objective, she then could have developed communication objectives (see examples in illustration 1). Once her manager agreed with them she could look at how to
achieve them and plan the session (see examples in illustration 2).

A good side event is based on good communication. Good communication is based on a clear and focused communication objectives that are the basis for the means and approaches chosen for the side event. It is not the other way around. And mind you: give enough attention to the attuitude objectives, they mostly come last if given any attention at all.

Positive Change

A sustainable future requires change at all levels. Change is an individual and emotional event – that depends on collective actions for success. Deep listening, communication, learning and facilitation can help to create the will to cooperate: the key to trigger positive behaviour change.